Original Copy

– Is it wrong to love a married woman?
– There is a term for it – Extra-marital Affair.
– I didn’t say ‘for a married woman to love’ but ‘to love a married woman’.

Do people have to earn a right to love someone, one right for each? Even if that is the case, I earned it much before her husband. It was when I painted. Actually, much before that. When I drew, or when I started to write, or even when I tried to scribble on a blank, black slate with chalks. ‘Ya-ya’, she would say, her tiny lips wet with saliva, when her mother used to bring her to our house once a week. She was a good friend of my mother and I, three years old, was given the responsibility of utmost importance to look after her when they engaged themselves in their womanly conversations that would go for hours. I would show her my scribblings on the slate and she, with her big, non-blinking eyes and wet, toothless smile would stare at them. Sometimes, lying down on her soft cushioned makeshift bed, she would throw her tiny legs and hands up and then slam them down, as if trying to suggest a change in what I had scribbled. At one such occasions, I, thinking she was asking for the chalk, handed one to her which she instantly put in her mouth. I had to snatch it out, dripping with her saliva, to which she decided to react by crying. At the end of the incident, it was concluded that I was feeding her chalk. I kept that stick of grey chalk, hidden in a metal box. If I go to my ancestral house today, I might even

– What is the best way to ensure a memory is etched in your head?
– You never know when you’re making a memory.
– But sometimes we do. Like when

I was in the eighth year at school when my English teacher gave me a copy of Oliver Twist. Read it, he told me, after the class. So, I read it. I loved it so much that I couldn’t stop going to her house, which was two houses next to ours, at 9 in the night, in the pretext of handing over her notebook, and force her to

– Read it.
– Why?
– Because I liked it. I loved it.
– I don’t like to read books.
– But you will read this. (I yelled)
– It’s so thick. All my course books combined are this thick.

It was then that I realised she was still in her fifth school year. But it didn’t stop me from going to her father and

– Uncle. Please ask her to read this book.
– Which book is it? Let me see. (He said this, muting the Television and putting on his reading glasses.) Oh. Oliver Twist! This was my favourite book too when I was your age. How did you find it?
– My teacher gave it to me. He thinks I can read big books.
– You sure can, son. This is one heavy book. I will make sure she reads it. You can take this book, I have a copy of the same in my bookshelf.
– But this is original. Why do you keep a copy?
– (Smiling) I have the original book. It is the way people call it. Original Copy. Now it is getting late. Let me walk you to your house.
– Ok.

I tried looking for her but she probably was in the kitchen with her mother.

– Why do you want her to read the book?
– Because it is the best book I have read.
– But why do you want her to read it?
– Because I want to her to read the best book.

My memory fails me but if you happen to trust my guess, I think he smiled within himself. That was when I thought I would remember the whole incident. I was happy that since Uncle had promised, she would definitely read it. It had rained that evening and the street smelled of wet earth.

– When it rains, what are you reminded of most often?
– The colony where my old house was, where I grew up.
– With her?
– With her.
– See. Now that’s the best way to ensure the memory you made stays forever.
– How?
– By attaching a sensorial element to it. It’s wonderful how senses retain memory. And if it is the matter of love, rest assured the sense is going to leave a mark on the heart too.

But what makes a mark on the brain? In biological terms, memory is, at its simplest, a set of encoded neural connections in the brain. It is the re-creation of past experiences by the synchronous firing of neurons that were involved in the original experience.

I was in the second year of my college when I kissed her. She was in the final year of her high school. During my vacation, every second day, we would meet – on the streets, in my house, in her house – every time, our parents keeping their eyes on us. To them, we were friends. To us, we were not. It was then that she told me

– I have started to paint.
– That’s one noble thing. How many days has it been?
– Two months, I guess.
– Well, then I must be the audience to your collection of paintings.
– No. They are bad. I am still learning. I still struggle with the Linseed Oil.
– Don’t get into technicalities. Show me.
– No.

I pulled her towards me. We were standing by the window in her room, overlooking the small garden in front of her house. Some strands of hair had fallen on her face, which I, with my right hand, had to shift to the left of her face so that I could kiss the lips that were still rounded with the No. Breathing heavily, we landed on the bed. My nose touched hers, her breath touched mine. I couldn’t see with my eyes closed and I believe no one can. But I did see one thing. I saw her looking at me with her eyes closed. After a hundredth of the second, which on the clocks of the real world could have been anything between five to fifteen minutes, she pushed me away, and, lying on her stomach and hanging her head off the bed, peeking below, pulled out her palette, tubes of colors, some brushes and a rough, rolled paper.

– This is the painting I am working on.
– Is it a ship?
– Yes. A ship.

It was beautiful.

– Let’s complete it.
– You’re the painter. I am not.
– You will be.

And she squeezed the tube of red on my face and started to laugh. I wiped it with my palm and rubbed it over her cheeks. It was after maybe one hour that we realised our clothes were somewhere on the floor, inter-mingled, and we were on the bed, in a similar state, I, wiping the yellow colour off her lower lip with my right thumb.

– So you both did it?
– No. We just made out. She was eighteen and scared. I was twenty-one and even more scared.
– What happened next?

Six years later, we went on our honeymoon to New Zealand.

– Next? An array of things happened. But I have one question.
– Yes?
– Can you copy a memory?
– Yes.
– Yes. Ok. Can you copy emotions?
– What does that mean?
– If you can copy memory, it wouldn’t be difficult to copy emotions, right? After all, both are effectively re-wiring of neurons.
– Well, theoretically you may.

How easy it is for us to say ‘theoretically’. People use it every time they think something is true but cannot prove its existence. Theoretically, there might be a God. Theoretically, time-travel is possible. But, I can assure you one fact about emotions. They can be copied, practically. It has been five hours since I have been out.

– I will take a leave then. It’s getting late.
– Oh yeah. Sure. Let’s catch up next weekend.
– Sure. I will let you know.

I ring the bell. She is asleep I guess. The key must be in my bag. Here it is. *Click* I am feeling sleepy too. I hope, in the next versions, they come up with a model where they remove the requirement of sleep. After all, it’s become a big industry with investments flowing in from almost every business house. When I was born, I was told that I was seeded thirty years back. My parents were there in the room but my eyes got fixed on her. She stood outside the glass door, staring at me with an emotion that was part melancholy, part love. I would have called her name quite loudly because I was pacified immediately by the nurses. The next time I woke up, I was in my house, in my room. My body was thirty years old but had been altered to the one of a twenty-eight years old. I had died when a truck ran over me, squashing every part of me, except my brain. And therefore, the neurological wiring was transferred to this reared body they call Slate Clones. We, Slate Clones, do not have any face. It is only when we are assigned a personality and memory that we get our physical attributes sculpted to fit the person being transferred to us. I am slightly taller than him – the old me – but I am still myself, my own self, but I feel different. No one has accepted me in totality, not even her. She says she loves me just like the earlier times, but in her eyes I still see the longing for him, my old self. The disconnect is so pertinent that I have started to consider my old self as another being, my own enemy. And in this conflict, I have started to empathise with other Slate Clones, all of whom face the similar lack of acceptance. Nothing has changed, except for our bodies, and barring a few minor differences, our makers have tried their best to match us to our old physical embodiments.

However, try as hard as I may, I cannot convince her to accept that she loves me lesser. And try as hard as I may, I cannot cease to adore her, this beautiful, beautiful woman.